6 Irrefutable Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about blogging, now is the time to take the leap.

Even though blogs are old news, it doesn’t mean their power has diminished. In fact, as the web becomes more focused on ways to share content and filter through all the noise online, I’m convinced blogs are more important now than ever.

If you don’t have a blog on your website, now is the time to do it.
 If you’re not convinced, read on.

Here are a few reasons why you need to stop what you’re doing and start building your blog today:

It establishes you as an expert in your niche.

Writing a blog is a great way to position yourself as an authority in your field of expertise. Yes, your website talks about all of your credentials, but the difference is that a blog is a way to demonstrate you have deeper knowledge in a subject area.

For instance, if you are an attorney, a blog allows you to go beyond a list of specialities and provide practical application for issues your clients face, discuss legal trends, or analyze new legislation and how it might impact your clients.

See the difference? That’s way better than a stale services page that says you are a full-service law firm any day of the week.

And, by positioning yourself as an expert, it can lead to all sorts of other things like speaking engagements, media coverage or even book deals.

It helps you engage with your customers.

Although your website might be lovely, I’m willing to bet there’s not a great way for your customers to interact with you on it. By adding a blog, you give customers, vendors and site visitors the ability to talk directly to you.

In today’s world of high-tech, adding some high touch to your business will really set you apart. Show that you’re listening by allowing visitors to post comments on your blog. And, even more importantly, respond back. I promise it will blow people away.

It helps you build relationships (and business).

People like to do business with those they know, like and trust. And a blog is a great way to start that relationship.

Because blogs are a bit more personal than the rest of your website, it gives readers a better insight into the people behind the business. And, the interactive nature (see point above) gives people the ability to interact with you before the do business with you.

If you are strategic about your blog’s content and setup, your blog can be a great way for people to get to know you and position them to buy, refer business your way or simply develop wonderful professional relationships.

It increases your search engine rankings.

Search engines like websites that are updated regularly. The problem is that many business websites are stagnant “brochureware” sites that only get updated a few times a year (if that).

By adding a blog, you are increasing your ability to be “found” online by regularly producing new content. Not only does a blog give search engines more content to search, but it also keeps readers and search engines happy by keeping the site fresh.

Also, blog posts are more likely to be linked from other sources, which also gives your search ranking a boost.

It helps you test ideas and get feedback.

Blogging is a great platform for getting a pulse on how your clients, colleagues and even prospects feel about something. Ask questions and find out what their pain points are so you can find ways to make your product or service better help them.

Or, you can also use your blog to flesh out ideas and get feedback on them before you implement a new service. Often, by listening to your blog community, they can help drive the direction of your business.

 

It helps your ideas spread.

Blogs make it easy to spread ideas online. Without a blog, what are people going to share about you and your business? Chances are, they aren’t going to.

Give your fans something to talk about and provide good, useful content on your blog. When you give away the good stuff, people are happy to share and will gladly come back for more.
Why do you blog? If you don’t blog, then what’s holding you back?

Image credit: CK Wong

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Laura Click

Laura Click is brand strategist, speaker, podcaster and the founder of Blue Kite. Learn more about Laura and her work at Blue Kite.

18 replies on “6 Irrefutable Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog”

In addition, Laura, and great points for sure, with the onset of Google+ peeps may be considering forgoing a blog
  and making content happen on G+ or Facebook. This is not a good idea. Have a SELF-HOSTED blog (I wanted to stress the importance of that) means you own and control your content.

Content ownership is a critical point everyone needs to understand. It’s not enough to use Blogger, Blogspot or WordPress.com — these are not self-hosted sites. When you launch go directly to a hosting company that has back-end tech capabilities with WordPress.org.

TOTALLY AGREE. I hinted at this a bit with some of the points and thought about breaking it out into a separate one – I should have.
 Having a home base is important. You never know when one of these networks will implode. And, it’s important to have control of over your content. Great point. This might be fodder for another post. 😉

Rock solid reasons, Laura!
  I do agree with @soulati:disqus in self-hosted blogs and controlling your own content.
  In the rush to be online, people may forgo a step or two that will save them long-term headaches.
 

I can say without a doubt that my blog has enhanced my reputation in my niche, totally enriched my life with my relationships (present company included, for sure!) and generally broadened my horizons.
  It’s an extra step for many a small business owner, especially if they are a solopreneur, but if they can get into the habit and hopefully see results, that extra time is GOLD.
 

Thanks for the link love, too!

Yes, I almost made this post about Google+, but wanted it to be evergreen. This might be my next post – why you should build a blog BEFORE you rush over to Google+.

You’re right – blogging is a lot of work. Make no mistake about it. But, I think the rewards are well worth it, don’t you think? So glad I met you through blogging! I think we have
 @markwschaefer:twitter
 to credit, don’t you think?
 

of course I could go on and on about this topic. And I have. : )

But the PR aspect of this has been huge for me. Based on one blog post, I was found by a NYT reporter and quoted in an article. That post was picked up by newspaperd in Seattle, Australia and London. Tat opportunity for massicve reach cannot happen with a tweet or status update. It has to come from a blog post.

Great piece!

Thanks for stopping by, Mark. I love your story about how a blog post led to massive media coverage for you! It just goes to show how powerful blogging can be. But, you do have to put in the work to get there.
 

I like the point you made about the fact that blogs help ideas spread. When we share and build blog communities, we get inspiration from others whose ideas we read and often give them credit (well, when we’re being nice!). So not only do more people know your name, they know you have ideas the blogger citing them doesn’t have–and they’re good ones. Make room on the subscription list!

Well said, Shakirah! Yes, a blog is a great way to expand on the thoughts of others, provide a counter point or take a stand on an issue. That’s why blogs are such great tools!
 

Right on with all points. I think the “freshness” aspect of a blog cannot be overstated. The more I learn about SEO and Google, the more I understand how much that is a factor.

Also, to echo the discussion with @soulati:disqus and @47d58be98d1441a276245024c9457dbf:disqus it is so important to have a home base where you control your content. G+ and Twitter are great but they are mere outposts to support your own place.

As for building relationships… I think we all know its great for that!

Well said
 @lauraclick:disqus
 a blog is a must for businesses it can be a mouthpiece, a place to talk with customers etc. Though it’s not an easy task and needs lot of effort but it’s reach and impact holds in the long run. one can read
 @markwilliamschaefer:disqus
 story for reff. thanks for the post 🙂

I think the WHY you need a blog combined with answering the question WHAT do you want from it can be crazy powerful for businesses. Depending on the goals a business has for their blog, they may only need one of these reasons. I think our responsibility as marketers and consultants is in helping them decide exactly what those reasons are and help businesses define their expectations for a blog. I thought you might like these statistics about the correlation between frequency of blog posts and lead generation. Compelling stuff and it goes hand in hand with your points!
 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-grow-social-media-leads-new-research/

Hi Joel – I finally got a chance to check out that article and digest all of the info. Fantastic resource! Thanks for sharing it. It’s amazing how much traffic and leads increase the more often you post on your blog (and do it consistently) and the larger social media community you have.
 I know that I’ve seen that on my end, but it helps to see some research that backs that up.

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